My Teenage Diary (Radio 4) returned yesterday with Sheila Hancock reading from her 14-year-old self's account of a trip to France. It wasn't a typical teenage diary: this was eloquent, funny and rather moving, as she wrote about her first kiss, for example. That was with a boy who looked like her heart-throb Danny Kaye, and she captured the Gallic romance of it all ("He danced, he sang, he gave speeches to the sky"), reading this beautifully.

Too beautifully, really, as it added to this programme's already too polished and scripted feel. I've struggled to get on with the show, however interesting it sounds in prospect, as it's a too carefully stage-managed encounter between guest and host Rufus Hound. It should feel risky, intimate, surprising, and sometimes embarrassing, just like when any of us go back to diaries from our youth.

Hound reacts to what the guest reads out with running gags and jokey asides, but these feel scripted rather than spontaneous, and he clearly knows what to expect. You really can feel this as you listen. The encounter between host and guest here is supposed to develop into an interview around the diary excerpts, and it does, but one that remains a bit rigid and superficial. It's a pity because in a different format this could make great radio.